Yoji Biomechanika -- Hardstyle Disco

He's a bit shy...

On September 1st, I met up with my friend of a quarter century, Shard, to have lunch with him at the newest branch of Santouka Ramen.

I decided to go with the $20 Toroniku Ramen. Flavorful and creamy broth with some very tender slices of pork cheek. If only my allergies weren't acting up, I would have enjoyed it all that much more.

As usual, Shard had quite a few books to hand over to me including William Gibson's "The Peripheral". And he even gave me a CD by this DJ named Yoji Biomechanika (although he seems to be going by just his first name now). The album is called "Music for a Harder Generation ~ Volume 2", and the track here is "Hardstyle Disco".

According to his Wikipedia file, he had become famous in the 1990s as a Japanese club DJ before he broke out internationally in 2001. Yoji specializes in the following forms of dance music: Hard Trance, Hard NRG, Hard Dance, Hardstyle, Tech Trance...none of which I can distinguish. I remember that there was a boom in Trance music in Japan for some years, and somewhere in my collection, there is a CD of Trancified versions of Japanese songs, including those by Yellow Magic Orchestra.

His "Hardstyle Disco" single came out in 2003, and since I can only fantasize being in dance clubs now, I would be interested in how folks danced to it. Was there a lot of bouncing about or did folks put in a lot more arm and leg action? Back in my alternating Friday nights at discos like The Copa and The Diamond, I was doing quite a bit of limb flailing to Pet Shop Boys and New Order.

In any case, I think that I've found my go-to disc for translating when I need to wake up and I don't have access to Red Bull.